1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to listing services. In particular, it relates to systems and methods of data acquisition for listing service providers.
2. General Background
In the current generation of listing services, listing service providers use World Wide Web (web) crawlers to visit and pick-up billions of listings from every accessible source on the Internet. Typically, upon the listing service provider acquiring the listings through web crawling, the listings are processed, indexed into search banks, and published on an Internet website. Listing service providers are, for example, auction websites listing auctioned items, job databanks listing employment opportunities and openings, real estate listing companies, among others. End users, seeking specific items, are provided with an easy web search capability that allows them to extract relevant information that addresses their needs.
In addition, listers possess listing information to be conveyed to end users. Thus, for example, a lister can be any entity that sells or leases items, or provides services. Examples of listers include vehicle manufacturers and resellers, home owners, employers, etc.
Listing service providers collect data from multiple listers, classify the collected data and list the data in a searchable form so as to provide an easy to use interface for users to find the items matching the criteria of the user. Listing service providers rely heavily on the web crawlers to gather information. Listers publish listings on Internet sites utilizing different methodologies, standards, and data formats. As such, listing information obtained by web crawlers is generally unstructured and in a non-standardized format. Therefore, undirected web crawling is not completely reliable because the methodology results in poor-quality listings. Further, filtrations systems utilized to eliminate irrelevant listings obtained through undirected web-crawling require computing power that can be more productively used in other processes.